Per capita credit card charge-offs

By Luther Martin — June 6, 2011

Last week I noted how the current per capita spending by US cardholders is about $10,500. According to the Federal Reserve, the current charge-off rate for credit cards is about 7.22 percent. That means that there's probably about $750 in charge-offs per capita in the US.

That's a lot. But that's down quite a bit from the past couple of years. Back then, the charge-off rates were over 10 percent, which would have given over $1,000 in charge-offs per capita.